Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas?
Jordan Spieth’s friend. That’s what many people called Justin Thomas when he started his career on the PGA Tour. Not many casual fans knew much about Thomas besides the fact that he was a good friend of Spieth.
Sure, Jordan has had more success than Justin so far at this stage of their careers, which made Justin being called Jordan’s “friend” reasonable. Spieth has 11 PGA Tour victories to Thomas’s eight, he leads the major championship category three to one, and he has spent 13 weeks atop the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR).
However, things look different now. Thomas currently sits second in the OWGR, two spots ahead of Spieth. Thomas has six victories on tour since the start of the 2016–17 season, compared to the three that Spieth has won.
If we’re talking head to head, the last 18 months are certainly a victory for Thomas. You could make the case right now that there isn’t a golfer in the world playing better than Justin Thomas right now and if he keeps up the way he’s been playing, it will only be a matter of time before he supplants Dustin Johnson as the #1 ranked golfer in the world.
Perhaps the best thing about the whole Thomas and Spieth battle is the fact that they are both just 24 years old (they’ll be 25 by seasons end). They are two young men who have yet to hit the prime of their careers. We haven’t seen them go toe-to-toe in tournaments very often, but they have both dominated the tour for stretches at a time and we could potentially see many more times for the next 10–15 years.
Justin and Jordan will probably never be considered “rivals” because they are close friends, much to the dislike of many of golfs older fans. However, watching these two battle it out on tour will be something special for at least the next decade. They will have company with the likes of Jon Rahm, Hideki Matsuyama, Patrick Cantlay, and many more, but make no mistake Justin vs Jordan will always be an intriguing battle to watch.
He started out as “Jordan’s friend” and now he is ahead of him in the OWGR. Will Justin Thomas have a more successful career than Jordan Spieth? Or will “The Golden Child” prove he is in fact better than Thomas? Right now, we don’t have an answer and it may take us 20 years to get an answer, which should make golf fans extremely excited about what is to come.
